Satyrus the Peripatetic and the marriages of Philip II

Abstract

A fragment, cited by Athenaeus (Deipn. xiii 557b–e =fr. 21) from the life of Philip II of Macedon by the Peripatetic biographer Satyrus, has been regarded by modern scholarship as a fundamental source for Philip's early campaigns and ‘matrimonial politics’. Here Satyrus lists Philip's wives, apparently in chronological sequence. The fragment, as it is usually printed, also states that during his reign Philip αἰεὶ κατὰ πόλεμον ἐγάμει. This has led scholars to infer a reasonably accurate account of Philip's method of conducting foreign policy through contracting political marriages.Beloch was among the first of modern scholars to link Philip's marriages (as listed in the fragment) with specific wars and even to alter their chronological order so that most of them can be pegged to the few known campaigns of Philip's early career. He tacitly repudiated Satyrus' order by placing the marriage of Phila of Elimeia before that of Audata of Illyria and relegating Audata to the position of Nebenfrau, raising her status to that of Gemahlin only after the (hypothetical) death of Phila. He gave no specific reason for doing this, but it would appear that he regarded the marriage between Philip and a woman of the politically unstable region of Elimeia as being more appropriate to the time of his accession and therefore more likely to have taken place before his marriage to the Illyrian.